The Former Prime Minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay delivered the main key note address at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford University on 9th January as the main event of the three-day International Society of Bhutan Studies (ISBS) conference.

The International Society for Bhutan Studies (ISBS) inaugural conference in Magdalen College, Oxford University made the important first step of discussing and studying the diverse and less discussed aspects of Bhutan in a large international academic setting. More importantly, it set up and gave shape to an independent international ‘Bhutan studies’ group in its own right.

Monday 18 JanuaryWork and Well-being. A Conceptual Suggestion based on the Capability ApproachPresentationWith: Nicolai Suppa, Technical University of Dortmund

Monday 30 NovemberMultidimensional poverty in Brazil, 2000-2010With: Adriana Stankiewicz Serra, Institute of Economics - University of Campinas, Brazil and Leeds University Business School

Monday 23 NovemberMissing the unhealthy? Examining the empirical validity of the Material Deprivation Indices of povertyPresentationWith: Selcuk Beduk, Department of Social Policy & Intervention, University of Oxford

Monday 26 OctoberMeasuring deprivation with exogenous weighting schemes and the possibility of heterogeneous target levelsWith: Anders Herlitz(1) & David Horan(2), 1)Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg & Department of Philosophy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2)Department of Economics, Oxford Brookes University

Monday 19 OctoberThe aspirational power of measuring poverty: How the Poverty Stoplight can complement the MPIPresentationWith: Katharina Hammler, Fundación Paraguaya

Monday 16 FebruaryMultidimensional poverty of households with disabled members in five Latin American countriesWith: Monica Pinilla, DPhil student at the School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham

Monday 9 February‘Inequality, growth and living standards in the OECD’PresentationWith: Brian Nolan, Professor of Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford and Director of the Employment, Equity and Growth Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

Tuesday 4 NovemberSpecial Guest Lecture at 5pm: 'The Art, the (Social) Science and the Politics of Building State Capability for Implementation'PresentationWith: Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Development Specialist, World Bank

Monday 27 October'Understanding later life from a multidimensional perspective'PresentationWith: Jiweon Jun, Research Officer, Centre for Time Use Research, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford

Monday 20 October'An empirical exploration of the “Shame of poverty” for Chile in 2009'PresentationWith: Gisela Robles Aguilar, Research Officer, OPHI

Thursday 13 March'Measuring human development index: The old, the new and the elegant'PresentationWith: Srijit Mishra, Associate Professor, Indira Ghandi Institute of Development Research

Thursday 6 March'Assessing the impact of corruption on peace and development: A look at the Global Peace Index and the Mexico Peace Index'With: Thomas Morgan, Research Fellow, Institute of Economics and Peace

Thursday 27 February'Who are the poorest of the poor? Assessing Ultra Poverty in Developing Countries'With: Suman Seth, Research Officer OPHI

In 2011, Colombia made an important change to the way in which poverty is measured. Together with a review of the methodology to measure monetary poverty, the government introduced a new methodology for measuring poverty – the Multidimensional Poverty Index for Colombia (MPI-C). This new scenario generated an important challenge: how to explain the existence of two poverty figures (monetary and multidimensional) to people. DANE, the institution in charge of measuring and disclosing poverty figures using the two methodologies, addressed this challenge by training media editors and reporters at a workshop on multi dimensional poverty entitled ‘the unknown dimension’. Silvia Botello from DANE gives an overview of the workshop.

Citation: Botello, S. (2019). ‘How to Explain the Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty to the General Public: Workshop for Journalists in Colombia.’ OPHI Briefing 52 (in English), University of Oxford.

Wednesday 9th January 2019, Sheldonian Theatre, University of Oxford, 2.30pm- 6.30pm
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) is delighted to announce an afternoon of two Distinguished Public Lectures on Bhutan, by the Former Prime Minister of Bhutan, His Excellency Dasho Tshering Tobgay, and the President of the Center for Bhutan Studies & Gross National Happiness, Dasho Karma Ura.
This event is free, and tickets are open to the public. Please book your ticket here.
Event details, 9th January 2019, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford:2:30-4:00pm His Excellency Dasho Tshering Tobgay will speak on The First Ten Years of Democracy: Reflections from Bhutan.
5:00-6:30pm Dasho Karma Ura will give a lecture on Development with Integrity: Bhutan’s development and its Gross National Happiness Index, chaired by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Professor Louise Richardson. Discussants include Martine Durand (Chief Statistician, OECD) and James Foster (Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University).
This event is part of the International Society of Bhutan Studies (ISBS) launch conference, taking place at Magdalen College, Oxford during 8-10th January 2019. The conference seeks to develop the study of Bhutanese culture, life and nature in all aspects and encourage, inspire and motivate interest in lesser known aspects and promote and strengthen the areas of existing concentration. ISBS exists primarily to encourage academic exchange, among both Bhutanese and foreign scholars, and secondarily to contribute to the happiness of future generations.
For information about the wider conference, please visit the conference website here.
For further information please email: isbsbhutan@gmail.com

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the short-term impact and long-term sustainability of Kenya’s Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP). Difference-in-difference and propensity score matching estimations are used to determine the impact of programme participation on the household multidimen­sional poverty index (MPI). We found that programme participation reduced the MPI significantly, which is mainly driven by the food insecurity dimension, and that the reduction in poverty is due to the reduction in the incidence and intensity, the latter in particular, of poverty among the ultra-poor households. Our analysis of the political economy of Kenya suggests that, while the government is making progress in the institutionalisation of social protection, weaknesses in the implementation and financing of the programme, as well as the short-term focus of impact evaluation, may undermine the programme’s poten­tial to help build a strong state that is accountable for the eradication of poverty.

The 6th Annual Meeting of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN) was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 30 October – 1 November 2018. The meeting was hosted by the Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation responsible for Statistics South Africa, with the support of the Department of Social Development and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

This dynamic meeting featured South-South exchanges about how countries and institutions were measuring and tackling multidimensional poverty to help improve the lives of the poor. Special attention was given to how the measures could be used for policy action and how to report the measures for tracking progress towards the SDGs.

At the opening session on 30 October, participants heard a keynote address from Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who also answered questions from the attendees about her experience with poverty reduction policies in South Africa. As the Minister said: “This meeting gives us a chance to work together in a South-South cooperation, to listen to each other, to hear about examples of best practice initiatives, and, most importantly, to learn from one another.” This was followed by a panel discussion on MPI uses from different regional participants. The afternoon was spent on an excursion organized by the Department of Social Development to two nearby community centres working with the poor at the grassroots level.

On 31 October, there was an introduction from Sabina Alkire, Director of OPHI, reviewing the MPPN’s activities for the past year. The substance then opened with a keynote address by Gonzalo Hernandez Licona, Executive Secretary of CONEVAL in Mexico. The first in-depth panel discussed experiences in developing, communicating, and launching a National MPI, with presentations from Malaysia, Morocco, Mozambique, and South Africa.

In the afternoon, representatives from the Seychelles, Chad, Kenya, Thailand, and Tanzania presented on the work they were currently doing to develop multidimensional poverty measures. The OPHI team then shared key findings from the recently revised global MPI 2018. This was followed by the second in-depth panel, focused on using an MPI for policy action, with inputs from Chile, Mexico, Panama, and Vietnam.

1 November opened with the third and final in-depth panel, featuring presentations from representatives of international agencies, including SADC, Sida, UNDP, UNICEF, UN-ECLAC, UN-ESCWA, and OPHI. The day continued with the final keynote presentation, this one from Risenga Maluleke, Statistician General of Statistics South Africa. The participants then had an open dialogue about negotiating different measures of multidimensional poverty and reporting progress towards the SDGs. The meeting closed with discussion of the communiqué and work plan for the coming year.

Who is poor? ~ Harvard Magazine

19th December 2010

An important watershed in the definition of poverty occurred this year when the Multidimensional Poverty Index was included as one of three new indices in the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2010. “The dollar-a-day measure doesn’t take into account many variations that influence the conversion of income into good living,” Sen points out. “All these would be captured in a properly multidimensional measure.” Read more